A few years ago, I made a post called "New neighborhood design," and since then I have refined it so it works much better than my original design, but the basic design for the residential areas remains basically the same. It has 9 "sub-neighborhoods" with the center one being the "neighborhood civic center" that contains the schools, etc. and the 8 outer ones being zoned as residential. My question though is not about my neighborhood design, but rather about the placement of reward buildings.
I can fit 4 such neighborhoods in a 2km x 2km ("medium city") and 16 in a large city, however, I use one of them, usually the northeastenmost one, for my airport, power plants(in the notheastern most corner), and most of my reward buildings.
I usually put in a municipal airport, even though the airstrip, with 2 or perhaps even 1 of the automatic upgrades would be plenty of airport capacity, I place the municipal airport specifically to "win" the convention center, which I place near the airport, because convention centers are generally near the airport in "real life." Then when I get the stock market, I put it near the convention center. This puts the convention center and the stock market near a business district, as I usually put business zoning next to airports.
I put the reward churches and the private schools in the "neighborhood civic centers," and put the cemeteries near the power plants to act as sort of a buffer between the areas I am developing and the power plants.
The placement of the other reward buildings is a combination of where they fit in my "reward building neighborhood" and whatever strikes my fancy when I get them. I guess my ultimate question is there a more "strategic" way to to place them.
For example, once I found an online guide, or perhaps a thread on Simtropolis or sc devotion or wherever (I really cant remember) that said it was "bad" to place the major and minor league stadiums near a residntial zoning, and I have placed it near and far away (or as far as I can get it) from residential zoning, and neither seemed to make any difference. I have also placed them right next to each other and as far apart from each other, or at least as far apart as I can get them, with the reasoning being that when the are far apart, there would be less traffic congestion caused by sports fans driving to and from the stadiums.
I know that the radio station, tv station, and the movie studio have a "positive effect" on commercial demand(or at least I think they do), but is their effect greater if they are put in or near a business district than if they are put out near the power plants, which in my cities is usually zoned as industrial.
